House browsing

This afternoon Charlene and I took a tandem up to Petaluma and toodled around from for-sale sign to open house, looking at places. We saw a couple of "we could live there", a few "this is the nicest house in the neighborhood, that's not good", one "split level Victorian" (don't mind if it's not one floor height, but they shouldn't differ by a few inches here and there...), one "we might make an offer on this, but it'll be at least $60k lower because of comps" (although, as we research comps more, I think we'd be more in line offering $100k lower), and one "this is out of our price range, but it's freakin' beautiful".

That last one was a house refinished by Luedecke Woodworks, and I'd never thought I'd love fir that much, and it was the first place I've been utterly blown away by concrete countertops. The place was just gorgeous, and although Charlene and I have both been talking about tearing out fireplaces for more usable room, this place had a hearth and mantle that made us say "okay, maybe we do have a fireplace".

Because we're project people, we want a fixer, but we now know what we want it to look like when we've fixed it. Worth checking these folks' work out!

Are probably nowhere near their lows, though that can vary by local market. There is still fresh news daily about mortgage issuers losses, and even that has a lag before it affects individual house prices. Yet to hit will be the even bigger defaults on enormous credit card debt. Bankruptcy filers in many states used to be able to keep their homes. With the recent changes in Federal law, this is no longer true, and even more houses will be forced into foreclosure. Many think that the banks which bought the changes to the Federal bankruptcy laws will pay an extremely high price, when they face the foreclosures tripped by insolvent credit card debtors.

Such rational planning and waiting to buy can be difficult when you fall in love with a house.

At this point we're not in love with a house (well, except for the aforementioned one that we can't justify anyway), but for various reasons are falling more and more towards a shell we can call home. But, yeah, this was a place they wanted mid to upper fours for which put the dollars per square foot way high, it's small, so it could be argued that there's the basic cost of an address, but even Zillow thinks it's worth low fours at best. Given that it's been on the market for at least two months and the tax records say they were paying taxes on it from when it was bought at under $30k, I was thinking we'd toss an upper threes at 'em and see if they bit.

When we get back from Thanksgiving vacation, so there's clearly no pressure on us, and if not, then we wait and it'll get down there.